Recession Romancing

The husband and I have been personally smacked in the face by the economy. And our town was also the victim of a major natural disaster, so all of our favorite places and things to do in town are closed indefinitely and we don't know if they are coming back. So, we are trying to come up with things to do on date night, without spending too much money. Here are the ideas we've come up with so far to turn our recession lemons into lemonaide.

1. We've been learning to make our own pizza instead of ordering out. Homemade crust is delicious. Although time consuming. Try making your own BBQ chicken pizza. This could take all night.

2. We canceled cable and hooked up our computer to our TV. Now we are addicted to Hulu.com. This weekend we became new fans of The Dresden Files. The recession makes nerds out of all of us. Next stop, borrowing Season one of Firefly on DVD from our token nerd friend.

3. Speaking of being nerds, we learned to play a super fun game called Settlers of Cattan. Look it up. Hours of nerdy, nerdy fun. And sub point 3.1. Two words: SCRABBLE TOURNAMENT. More fun than it sounds, friends.

4. And when we got sick of each other we, hosted a "recession party." The first rule of recession party: you can't buy anything for the recession party. We had people bring their left over booze, and half opened bags of chips and went to town. Don't believe the marketing. You can drink 3-year-old wild grape Smirnoff and live to tell the tale. Plus, it cleaned all those old marshmellows out of my cabinet. It might have been the most fun we've had. And the money I am going to make from the recycling will get me at least one cup of coffee from Starbucks. A luxury I cut out of my budget a long time ago.

Those are the ideas we've come up with since January. Do you all have any ideas? We are going to need more if this stimulus bill doesn't work. And seriously, trust me on the nerd fun.